tra slowly stemming the current of the
stream, its silken sails filled with the sea-breeze, its gilded oars
keeping time to the flutes, whose voluptuous melodies floated far out over
the vernal meadows. Tarsus was probably almost hidden then, as now, by its
gardens, except just where it touched the river; and the dazzling vision
of the Egyptian Queen, as she came up conquering and to conquer, must have
been all the more bewildering, from the lovely bowers through which she
sailed.

From the bridge an ancient road still leads to the old Byzantine gate of
Tarsus. Part of the town is encompassed by a wall, built by the Caliph
Haroun Al-Raschid, and there is a ruined fortress, which is attributed to
Sultan Bajazet Small streams, brought from the Cydnus, traverse the
environs, and, with such a fertile soil, the luxuriance of the gardens in
which the city lies buried is almost incredible. In our rambles in search
of a place to pitch the tent, we entered a superb orange-orchard, the
foliage of which made a perpetual twilight. Many of the trunks were two
feet in diameter. The houses are mostly of one story, and the materials
are almost wholly borrowed from the ancient city. Pillars, capitals,
fragments of cornices and entablatures abound. I noticed here, as in
Adana, a high wooden frame on the top of every house, raised a few steps
above the roof, and covered with light muslin, like a portable
bathing-house. Here the people put up their beds in the evening, sleep,
and come down to the roofs in the morning--an excellent plan for getting
better air in these malarious plains and escaping from fleas and
mosquitoes. In our search for the Armenian Church, which is said to have
been founded by St. Paul ("Saul of Tarsus"), we came upon a mosque, which
had been originally a Christian Church, of Greek times.

From the top of a mound, whereupon stand the remains of an ancient
circular edifice, we obtained a fine view of the city and plain of Tarsus.
A few houses or clusters of houses stood here and there like reefs amid
the billowy green, and the minarets--one of them with a nest of young
storks on its very summit--rose like the masts of sunken ships. Some palms
lifted their tufted heads from the gardens, beyond which the great plain
extended from the mountains to the sea. The tumulus near Mersyn, the port
of Tarsus, was plainly visible. Two hours from Mersyn are the ruins of
Pompeiopolis, the name given by Pompey to the town of Soli, aft